SenLinYu: Don’t Try To Be for Everyone
In this interview, author SenLinYu discusses writing about moral greyness in war in their debut fantasy novel, Alchemised.
SenLinYu (she/they) grew up in the Pacific Northwest and studied classical liberal arts and culture. They started writing in the Notes app of their phone during their baby’s nap time. Their collected online works have garnered over twenty million individual downloads and have been translated into twenty-three languages. They live in Portland with their family. Follow them on X (Twitter), Instagram, and Bluesky.
In this interview, SenLinYu discusses writing about moral greyness in war in their debut fantasy novel, Alchemised, learning to trust their instincts in the writing process, and more.
Name: SenLinYu
Literary agent: Caitlin Mahony, Rivka Bergman
Book title: Alchemised
Publisher: Del Rey
Release date: September 23, 2025
Genre/category: Fantasy/Sci-fi
Elevator pitch: A wartime healer with memory loss is kept captive by a dangerous necromancer as he tries to discover what she’s forgotten.
What prompted you to write this book?
For me, stories always begin with a question, something I’m thinking through and wrestling with. I find that writing about it in the format of a story, exploring it through the lens of characters who are not me, lets me process the idea from multiple angles, and even if I don’t ultimately arrive at some final answer, I feel more at peace by the end. In the case of Alchemised, I wanted to write something that explored the moral greyness of wartime decisions. A lot of the books I was reading at the time made me feel like many of the choices the characters were making were either glossed over or conveniently without consequence, and so I wanted to write a story that was specifically about those kinds of choices and wrestling with the question of how far is too far.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
The initial idea, dealing with moral greyness in war, came to me in 2017, but writing wasn’t something I was considering at that time, so I jotted the concept in a Google doc and completely forgot about it for almost a year. When I was trying to give myself a creative challenge in 2018, I poked through my graveyard of story ideas and began building a larger plot around the premise. I’d written one story previously, but it had been improvised chapter by chapter, whereas this time I had to sit down and plot out all the details. I realised that the story needed more than my initial premise. So, I started thinking about what other themes and questions would fit and expanded the idea into exploring not only the narratives around war, but also the erasure of actions and labour that doesn’t meet the standard, generic definition of heroism.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
Since this was my first book being published, everything felt new and surprising all the time. I tried to be very open to the fact that it was all new and to just adapt along the way as I figured things out, but the way the publishing process veers between slow and fast, where there’s months of relative quiet to suddenly a dozen things to approve, discuss, review within a matter of days was a bit of a panic-inducing the first few times.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I had only worked with beta readers prior to this, which was a much more chapter-by-chapter process with a lot of immediate back and forth; switching to writing the whole manuscript and sending it over and then having to wait to get feedback was rather anxiety-inducing. However, it really helped me to grow up and learn to trust my instincts rather than always needing immediate feedback and affirmation about my decisions.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
My hope would be for readers to see the world from a slightly different angle after reading it; to question why so much of our lives gets pared down into convenient narratives and wonder at what keeps being left out.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Don’t try to be for everyone. As writers, finding the balance between writing as a craft and writing as a job is a constant struggle, and it can feel necessary to be as broadly appealing as possible in an attempt to "find" your audience. But if your passions suppress what makes you unique as a writer, the people who would be uniquely passionate about your writing won’t be able to tell you apart from everyone else.
